RH to score Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly?

by Dylan on December 11, 2005

Todd from Twitch (a great site dedicated to independent and cool mainstream films) wrote in with some very interesting information. It’s still squarely in the rumor pile, but someone supposedly connected with the film wrote in to Twitch to report that Radiohead has been approached to score A Scanner Darkly, the new animated science-fiction film from Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Slacker, School of Rock). From the posting on Twitch:

“I have a friend who is an animator on Richard Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY. I thought you might be interested in this scoop.
The movie is doing very well in test screenings, but the #1 complaint audiences have is with the score. So I can only tell you this anonymously, but the producers have approached RADIOHEAD about doing a new score for the film and it looks like everything is going to go through. So in addition to an awesome animated Phillip K. Dick film, we will have a brand new Radiohead score to look forward to. as far as I know, this is the first time Radiohead has ever done a score for the film. While this is still a “rumor” at this time, I would give it a 99% accuracy rating at this point.
Also, I’ve seen the new trailer for the film and it is absolutely outstanding. It should be hitting the web any time now.”

Twitch has historically been very accurate in the past, but in this case I’m not sure the timing works out- with Radiohead hard at work on a new album, it seems odd that they’d take time away from that to score a film. Still, members of Radiohead have mentioned in the past that they’d love to do a film score, and this film (go check out the first trailer here) looks like the perfect film for it.
The film was originally scheduled for release in early 2005, but has been pushed back to mid-2006, supposedly to give the animators more time to “work on the film”. It either means Warner has great faith in the film, or it’s bad to the point of being unreleasable. We’ll see…
(Thanks to Todd and Twitch).